Ars readers weigh in: Bring us Siri on OS X!

Some readers are trepidatious, but they'll give Siri a shot.

Would you use Siri if it were to be added to OS X 10.9? That's what we asked Ars readers last week in a poll following renewed rumors about Apple's plans to add Siri to the desktop. Apple had made a job posting about expanding Siri's reach but did not specify it was for iOS—instead, the company listed OS X as one of the key requirements.

This came several months after a rumor from late last year that suggested Apple was indeed adding Siri to OS X 10.9, in addition to replacing Google's mapping data with its own. So we decided to see what our readers thought, and you guys answered. In our first question, we asked whether you use Siri on your iOS device. A surprising 61.7 percent of you said yes, with just over 25 percent of you saying you either like/love it or you have no complaints. (36.4 percent said you use Siri, but it could use some improvements.)

Roughly 12 percent of you said you have never even tried Siri because you have no desire, while almost 20 percent said you'd tried it but didn't like it.

So how might those numbers translate to the desktop? In response to our second poll question, 52 percent of you said you would use Siri or at least give it a shot if it were to appear in a future version of OS X. About 9 percent of you said you were unsure (don't worry, Siri can't bite you), while just over 10 percent of you said you wouldn't use Siri on OS X due to your bad experiences on iOS. Almost a third—about 27.6 percent—said you're just plain not the type to want to speak to your computer. We're sure HAL is crying in his space pod somewhere right now.

No way José

Plenty of you were happy to share your reasons why you would or wouldn't want to use Siri on the desktop, too. "Where I think Siri benefits is creating the ability to do tasks hands free. On a computer you are hands on by default, and that seems to eliminate the benefits Siri offers, while still offering the frustrations that comes along with it," wrote AaronLeeR.

"80 percent of the time, I use Siri for dialing. Telling Siri to 'Call John Doe' is much easier that unlocking the phone, switching to Spotlight, and typing the name," added eighthnote. "Finding restaurants or directions is quite useful as well, simply because finding the app and typing on the iPhone keyboard can be slow. Since my computer has a full keyboard and a million other shortcuts, I don't really see that I would have a use for it."

And of course, no one really wants to be in a room with someone talking to their Mac. "It's bad enough having to share public spaces with people talking to their phones. Having to share my office space with people talking to their computers as well is my worst nightmare!" said scottishwildcat.

But maybe Siri could be used to apply to other things, like Ryoshi's suggestion: "Forget computers, I want something like Siri for my entertainment setup. Kinect seems to be close to what I want, but I don't really want to buy an Xbox 360 for a single peripheral."

Ensomnea may have summed it up best, however, for those who are already dictation fiends: "I prefer Dragon."

Bring us the Siri

But despite some skepticism of Siri's abilities, there were equally as many—if not more—of you who said you'd love to give Siri a shot on your Mac.

"Yep. Why? For setting reminders, calendar events. That is what I find Siri useful for (and Google voice search, now that I'm on a Nexus 4 instead of an iPhone, in which I also used to set alarms). It is much quicker to say 'Remind me to do x at x' than to manually enter something in," wrote Quassin.

Tuxedocat took the idea to creepy levels by suggesting Siri could be listening to your entire environment all the time—but in a totally good way, he swears. "My iMac is in a room where I do several other things. It would be nice if it was always listening and could answer various questions without me going over to the keyboard. I'll say yes."

Another user named spittingangels took AaronLeeR's point to task by noting that a full keyboard doesn't necessarily mean efficiency. "Arguing that Siri would be useless on a desktop because one already has a keyboard is a hollow argument. Siri provides a different interface that abstracts away complex tasks or ones involving multiple steps so that they can be executed in a single query or command."

And zelannii pointed out that even if Siri on OS X can't do anything special like cook you breakfast, it would still be useful for scheduling appointments—especially if it could do so by querying other people's calendars. "I queue up a lot of appointments each day, and it would be very handy to ask Siri to make those appointments for me. 'Get Bob, Jane, me, and the boss into a conference room for one hour ASAP' and Siri could look into the calendar, find free times, and book a conference room through Exchange. That would be AWESOME!"

Before Apple brings Siri to desktops, I would like the international version to be better. Here in Germany you can't "just talk" to your phone to do a given task. You have to be pretty precise and use the same sentence structure the German Apple team responsible for Siri programmed in. For example, I can (for me naturally) say: "Schreib X-Person: Ich finde die Idee klasse (Write to person x: I like this idea). Siri doesn't write an iMessage. It does a note. At this state there is just no difference to normal voice control in my eyes. Considering that this has been going on for almost 2 years now...

I've been playing with the new enterprise version of Dragon Medical. Pretty darned impressive. Works reasonably well in a crowded environment, has the medical dictionary down cold. I'll probably switch to using it for dictations after I file down a couple of rough edges.

Could something like this work on a desktop? Perhaps. Right now, as I type, I have my hands on the keyboard. Moving it away to the track pad does slow me down (sigh, first world problems, again). Having the ability to do other things, open a window, check on an appointment, answer an email, all the while typing away might be a productivity booster.

But it's going to have to be a better experience than Siri on the iPhone. Too many mistakes, too many dumb answers. Voice control only works well when it is darned near perfect. If you have to stop and correct it, what is the point?

I would definitely use Siri on my iMac. I already use it on my iPad throughout the day. This would just be one more added convenience. I'm always setting appointments, reminders, quick email messages. The less I have to use the keyboard and mouse, the happier my hands and wrists will be.

I already use Mac OSX Speech Recognition and Text to Speech alerts, and the key to success is to avoid the uncanny valley by programing the voice to be sufficiently synthetic that it is identifiable and a machine. By current voice setting if Kathy set one big click in the S-L-O-W direction. My colleagues don't seem to mind and some even use it as a warning that I am present.

Overall, Siri could be improved greatly by executing searches and commands not dependent on internet connectivity natively, internet dependance is the weakest aspect of the current build.

Before Apple brings Siri to desktops, I would like the international version to be better. Here in Germany you can't "just talk" to your phone to do a given task. You have to be pretty precise and use the same sentence structure the German Apple team responsible for Siri programmed in. For example, I can (for me naturally) say: "Schreib X-Person: Ich finde die Idee klasse (Write to person x: I like this idea). Siri doesn't to an iMessage. It does a note. At this state there is just no difference to normal voice control in my eyes. Considering that this has been going on for almost 2 years now...

This is also the case in Chinese and English, but I found the performance can be improved if you "follow the instructions" and set up Siri for your personal voice settings.

This is particularly important in Chinese which has many regional accents and dialects (maybe worse than English), so to some degree one must be careful to speak standard Putonghua and avoid certain idiomatic expressions common in speech that can be confusing nonsense out of context.

But what voice is useful for is routine things such as dialing, searching and other simple tasks.

Language is very complex and I really respect anyone who can make voice recognition work, the task is quite difficult.

Siri is limited by the requirement all requests be handled via Apple servers. Desktop/laptop superior processing capabilities are an opportunity to do more on the local machine. Perhaps all requests could go simultaneously to the local machine and Apple servers, with the local machine executing what it can and telling the remote servers, 'thanks, already done that' or, 'thanks, I tried to do this but couldn't.' Such a dual approach could provide Apple with valuable intelligence on how to move forward on both fronts, while remaining largely invisible to the user.

I don't use siri much because it either takes too long to get a response, or it does the wrong thing.

I've been testing out an android phone for the past week, and while google's "now" app is better in a lot of ways, it's also not perfect. one thing they do better is

they need to solve the lag--even well-networked devices have too much lag if they have to check in online to get the speech translated into text--because that's what siri is really doing, interpreting transcribed speech. isn't apple using nuance/dragon for the actual speech recognition part (in english anyway)?

My keyboard doesn't know what tomorrow is, or who my girlfriend is, or what yesterday's score for the Kansas City Chiefs was. It's more work to type all that nonsense about reminding me to watch the Chief's game on Sunday at 10 a.m. than to say it. Or to remind me to pick up a Valentine's day card after work to go with the mammoth tusk and jet earrings I bought her last week.

But what are the chances Siri will say, "The Chiefs? Are you kidding?" Or worse, "Mammoth tusk, are you sure that wasn't elephant ivory?"

I thought speech control was cool with OS/2 Warp, and I still think its cool now. Apple (Siri) and Microsoft (TellMe, Kinect) both ought to incorporate their respective controls into their full features OSs. The fact their phone OSs have this tech but not their regular OSs is sort of crazy.

Bring it, open up the API, and let us figure out uses for it. It'll be great

Well Siri has to much potential but I can't see anyone using it until it can maintain a state longer than one instruction.

Siri, identify the top 10 rock bands of all time...Siri, for those bands identify the labels.Siri, identify the public relations contact for those labels. Siri, email me the list of those contacts with the band names.

Would I use it a lot on my mac? Probably not. But sooner or later we all will be talking to computers ala start trek. It will control the apple tv, make appointments, dial the phone, turn on the lights and a ton of other things that we cannot even imagine. But you have to start somewhere. Siri on the phone was a very first small step. There will be a lot of small steps to come. But we have to take the steps - one at a time. A nd it will be fun / frustrating going through the process. Lets get on with it.

(Same discussion as respects the I watch. Sooner or later that willaso become a standard input output device. Lets get going.)

Might it's potential usefulness for the blind and disabled make it a worthwhile endeavorer regardless what the able bodied people on Ars think?

People with speech impairments (like me) are very nervous about the whole voice command thing. I've never had any luck with voice-activated devices before. Plus, I don't even like speaking to machines, period. Unlike people, who nod blankly when they don't understand me, I can't get that feedback from a machine until I'm done speaking, and usually I have to go through the whole process again, only to fail spectacularly. And people are better at understanding anyways. I use lots of emotional and physical cues to help me along, that aren't available.

Siri for OS X absolutely MUST give you the option to type queries. Typing is much faster than on an iPhone, the Mac microphones and fan noise will make the results worse, and it only transcribes your speech into text anyway. It should also have an offline mode that takes advantage of the power and free space Macs offer, with updates pushed out automatically so it can pick up new features as it goes.

Maybe they could even merge it with Spotlight somehow, so you can use natural language to find arbitrary documents on your computer, and so it would cut down on the number of non-removable menu icons that are piling up on the side.

I don't talk to my phone. I have tried SIRI and it is lacking - feels like it needs another 15 years of hard development before it's truely viable.

It takes too long to adapt to someone's method of speech - so a User still has to adapt how they speak to accommodate the software - no thank you.

Again - SIRI's usefulness also decreases with an increase in people within earshot. So if you are talking (or shouting) to your phone already - this will be real fun when you are in a computer lab OR public access area OR work environment and 12± people are all talking to their computers.

And with all that said - they would ahve to refione the hell out of it - and not limiit iot to very few and given functions or tasks.

I would expect to be able to:- Open Software - AND Close software- Shut Down or Reboot the system- perform any function that I can already do with a keyboard and/ or pointing device--- use software like PS and all of it's features--- access Preferences and Settings and change them

Touchscreen technology is the same deal - a nice novelty that everyone seems to "need" to have and yet it is a far cry from being anything actually viable to replace much less supplement a keyboard/pointing device method.

If I haev to Press and hold a button to activate SIRI - wait several seconds for it to kick in and then speak and maybe it understand the first time (yeah right) -- in the amount of time frakking with SIRI I could have already swiped to the screen on my phone and pressed a button to launch an application and already started doing stuff - no thank you.

I thought speech control was cool with OS/2 Warp, and I still think its cool now.

OS X and Windows already have voice control, similar to how the iPhone had it before it was replaced by Siri.

Quote:

- Open Software - AND Close software- Shut Down or Reboot the system- perform any function that I can already do with a keyboard and/ or pointing device--- use software like PS and all of it's features--- access Preferences and Settings and change them

You can already do those things too. Look up Speech Commands for OS X.

Please no. Can you imagine an office full of lazy colleagues talking to their computers all day instead of doing it the faster way?

If you can't type/task faster than you can talk, you need more training and practice, not Siri.

If there is any brain left at Apple they will integrate this with Spotlight so you can just type to your computer instead of speaking to it. The point of Siri isn't the speech recognition, it's the fact that it can understand (some) sentences and commands. On a computer typing something instead of speaking surely often is the better option, yes. Shouldn't make any difference, though.

Go and try Fantastical for a while on your Mac. You'll never open iCal to schedule an event ever again.

I am in a work environment with my employees -- I will not talk to my computer like a fool. Even now, Siri is mainly "what I do while I'm driving alone" since it's not nearly 100% accurate and I seem like an idiot trying requests 2-3 times, shouting at Siri, calling her expletives for not understanding me and so on. I don't need this silliness in my company.

I don't know how I would use it with OSX until I see how it's implemented. And my guess is that I wouldn't use it all that much, but not because I don't like Siri. She's fine, and I use Siri on my iPhone.

But my iMac has uptimes of months at a time, so most of the programs I use on any regular basis are already open. I touch-type at a good rate, so I doubt that using Siri to enter text would be any sort of advantage. Etc.

But I would definitely give it a try, and see how it might help me along. But without seeing her in action on OSX, it's tough to imagine what exactly would happen.